Dolomites - July 6

I meant to get a good night's sleep because I planned on doing some serious riding today. That grand plan was foiled by the wedding revelers and by a bout of gluttony on my part brought on by the location. Also, at 7am some very enthusiastic church bells roused the believers from their slumber to get ready for church. The unbelivers, sadly, were collateral damage and also awake. It is always ill advised to do the menu completto in Valdo, but it's oh so difficult to resist. I alway say "yield to temptation, it may not pass your way again". So I didn't, resist that is, and washed down some awesome food with a bottle of Prosecco and a caffe corretto. Yum. Fried zucchini blossoms, sopressa, pancetta, gnocchi with duck ragu, grilled steak and beans, dolce. Oink, I know. I really need to eat iceberg lettuce for a week. When it was time to go they were preparing lunch, and boy was I ready to stay...

Instead, north to the Dolomites. The forecast was mighty dicy, but I decided to chance it since today was my last day south of the Alps, and the only other viable option was to stay for lunch - tempting.
I rode out through Prosecco country and then north via Passo di San Boldo. Aptly named because the switchbacks are tight single lane IN tunnels. The whole things is one way at a time only and controlled by lights. Check it out, there are some cool pix out there.
As I was decending from San Boldo, the Dolomites came into view. Awesome, but with some worrisome cloud banks.

As I was driving along I passed a traffic light type sign which had all the high passes listed. About half were in red. Oops, so much for blind optimism. Well, at this point, the was nothing to do but press ahead. I recognized most of the names, so I thought I should be able to navigate around them. I decided to go towards Cortina because the clouds weren't quite so dark in the east. It was then that I realized one of the unknown passes was in the way. Well, lots of people seem to be going up so let's give it a try. After a third of the way (9 switchbacks) traffic stopped dead. Fine, that didn't work out, back down, onwards to plan B - into the dark gray stuff. I decided it was a good idea to make sure everything was in its watertight bags and that I was fully zipped up.

What's more exciting than riding a pass in the Dolomites? Why riding it in the rain of course. Luckily it wasn't one of the very high ones - only 1800m - and I'd ridden it before, so I knew it was pretty tame, but not a whole lot of fun anyway. Made it down into Corvara where I expected to turn off towards the Wuerzjoch, my target for today, where I planned to stay in the refugio. Unfortunatley the town was basically closed. Some sort of festival/bike race and I could only go west up Gruendnerjoch (2200m). Luckily the rain stayed away from at run and the street dried out as we gained altitude. It's a great pass with spectacular views, but it totally took me away from where I wanted to be.

I tried to map a reasonable ride back to the refugio, but finally gave up in frustration and decided to bunk in Brixen. It's a good launching point for riding the Timmelsjoch again on my way back to Germany tomorrow.

 

P.S. Second time around, the Dolomites were just as mindblowing.